Cluster: Before you begin

Before you begin

• A compatible Linux host. The Kubernetes project provides generic instructions for Linux distributions based on Debian and Red Hat, and those distributions without a package manager.

• 2 GB or more of RAM per machine (any less will leave little room for your apps).

• 2 CPUs or more.

• Full network connectivity between all machines in the cluster (public or private network is fine).

• Unique hostname, MAC address, and product_uuid for every node. See here for more details.

• Certain ports are open on your machines. See here for more details.

• Swap disabled. You MUST disable swap in order for the kubelet to work properly.

Verify the MAC address and product_uuid are unique for every node

• You can get the MAC address of the network interfaces using the command ip link or ifconfig -a

• The product_uuid can be checked by using the command sudo cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_uuid

It is very likely that hardware devices will have unique addresses, although some virtual machines may have identical values. Kubernetes uses these values to uniquely identify the nodes in the cluster. If these values are not unique to each node, the installation process may fail.

Check network adapters

If you have more than one network adapter, and your Kubernetes components are not reachable on the default route, we recommend you add IP route(s) so Kubernetes cluster addresses go via the appropriate adapter.